Burn Brighter in 2021

Hmm. Things are exactly the same as they were last time I wrote. It’s another heat wave that Portland is not at all prepared for, though this time there’s also smoke everywhere from fires elsewhere in Oregon. I’m in the living room, unable to sleep on this not-awesome foldout sofa I bought from IKEA. There’s a woefully inadequate air conditioner here, so it’s a lot cooler than being in my room.

I was finally warming to the idea of not being a hermit anymore, and recently saw some friends I hadn’t seen in a year and a half, even though they live nearby. Masks are back on indoors, and perhaps another lockdown will happen. It sucks, but that’s because the situation sucks. A lot of people, including myself, are vaccinated, but a lot of people aren’t, so we remain in this weird half-assed state of limbo where we’re protecting people but also not getting rid of the virus. I can’t imagine that will change anytime soon. People who are opposed to it just dig their heels in deeper and deeper. I wouldn’t waste my breath trying to convince anyone I know who isn’t vaccinated to get the vaccine. Like my father and brother, who are coming to visit early next month. So that will be interesting. They’ll have to deal with the “mask-wearing bullshit”, as my dad always says, as long as they’re visiting here. I’m not sure how it will go, but it’s happening. Hopefully I’ll be able to take them to the Redwoods and some other cool nature-y places, but with the fires and hot-ass weather, who knows. I haven’t seen them in five or six years, and even then it was only for a few hours. It’s been 13 years since I left my hometown. Fuck. I don’t even know my family anymore, and they don’t really know me. That’s how it goes though, I made the choice to leave and not really make an effort to stay in touch. I was always obsessed with the future, and looking forward. I still am, though I have scant little to show for it.

Work seems to be going well. I don’t really hear one way or the other. I scarcely interact with anyone aside from my friend that helped me get the job, we meet once a week usually at a nearby library to work on websites. I’m learning as I go, hoping to get good at this before I fuck something up. Blending in and being an impostor is nothing new. I definitely don’t want to mess this up though, I’ve gotten pretty used to working remotely on my own schedule. I got my first full check at this pay rate, that’s pretty nice too. I’m being smart about being self-employed this time, setting aside money for taxes so I don’t have that panicked feeling of dread come January.

I’ve been eating a lot less, starting to slowly drop some weight. Usually it’s two meals a day and a snack or two, mostly fruit, and a salad for at least one meal. It seems quite sufficient too, so I guess I’ve just been overeating for like…my whole life. I was definitely taught to always clean my plate, surely a holdover taught to my parents’ generation from their parents and grandparents that lived through the Great Depression or dealt with the aftereffects of it. Haven’t been going to the gym as consistently as I need to. I also need to fix my treadmill, for some stupid reason you can’t turn it on without the remote, which I have conveniently misplaced.

I definitely need to get out there, socially, in some way. Well, depending on how locked-down things are. Not only with dating, but probably also just being social. I had accepted being a shut-in and not seeing anyone that I used to hang out with regularly around here. Surely, people had moved on and there was nothing left in common. I guess people move on somewhat, but it’s not like that much has changed. Maybe they have more kids. Maybe they have different jobs. They’re still the same people, though. So am I, as much as I’d rather not be. I was all fine to just let everything rot, but all it takes is a text, or one of the roommates reaching out to mutual friends for a hangout, and then I’m like “well, sure, why not?”. Hah. I tend to assume that silence = apathy, though it’s usually not the case. Maybe it’s being paranoid, or a defense mechanism.

I finally got my second tattoo, after two times of it being rescheduled. I didn’t mind, it was done by a friend who is in tattoo school. It looks really good too. I waffled hard on what I wanted the colors to be, but I’m really happy with how it works out. I’ll have to take a picture and upload it sometime. I definitely want to get more, although I don’t want them all to be referencing video games. Some music-related ones would make sense, but I’m not sure what I’d want. Plus, it might be regretful later, some of my favorite bands are fronted by people that seem like they are assholes. Idols will fail you at some point, but ideals are far less likely to. I don’t want words either as a tattoo really, so that just leaves some sort of abstract design. Hmm. It’s definitely an addicting feeling though, getting inked. I want a few more but don’t want to go too crazy. Nothing on the hands, definitely nothing on the face. Not that I’m planning to work a normal job again, but you never know.

Even though it’s at odds with my desires, I can definitely see the appeal of being a hermit. I’m halfway there already. I rarely check Facebook out of boredom and morbid curiosity, I haven’t interacted with it or anyone on there in years. Same with Instagram and all those other sorts of things. It was hard to relate then, and even moreso now. It’s just spam and bullshit. The feed is mostly memes or other reposted things, usually something related to political stuff or people bitching about the governor requiring masks. As selfish and self-indulgent as I wish I was, I just can’t relate to it in the slightest. Rarely is anything funny or clever, and it’s also cringe-inducing seeing family members reposting conservative political memes, knowing they’ve done zero research on any of it. Does this make people happy? What’s the point? Then again, what else is there? So many streams of thought have coalesced into Facebook or Youtube, homogenized and replaced by nothing. Of course there are other communities, especially with niche things, but that’s beyond me. I don’t really think I’d fit in with any sort of niche fan community for anything, I have no interest in being defined by being a fan of any certain thing. I just don’t feel like I fit in anywhere. It’s kind of like high school all over again, except with everywhere, and probably for the rest of my life, heh. There were definitely times when I did feel like I belonged to a community, like with Open Diary, or some of the forums I frequented back in the day, but those are long gone. Is it on me to explore places virtual and tangible and find somewhere else I could enjoy belonging to? Absolutely. I don’t do that though, and generally it doesn’t bother me that much. Mostly it’s just at night, when I can’t sleep and am alone with my thoughts, that I pine for any semblance of holding onto those places and those people. This is probably the closest that I can come to that, though even most of the people that I followed here from OD either no longer post or post infrequently. This thread also becomes slimmer and slimmer, destined to snap irreparably one day.